Climbing Chamundi Hill

by Ariel Glucklich

  The minister suddenly felt overcome with a desire to return home. When the ship docked at port he thanked his host and asked about the shortest route to Anga. It had been months since the day he had vanished, and the king was thrilled to see his weary old friend. “Why did you leave me, good man? This journey of yours was a cruel thing for your mind to conceive, and it did no good for your body either…Well, I suppose it was fate, so how can I complain? Tell me, old friend, what did you see on your travels?”

  The minister skimmed over the details of his pilgrimages, which he did not expect the king to appreciate, and then proceeded to the description of the sea journey and the huge wave on which the young nymph sang a mysterious song especially for him. “The wave just stopped in mid-flow, higher than your palace, and suddenly a tree appeared in its crest, blinding me with the brilliance of its gems. But above all else, the maiden on the couch was clearly the most beautiful woman in all of existence, although her voice was as sad as the end of youth.”

  “Tell me more. I want to hear everything!” exclaimed the king in excitement. And, as the minister repeated every detail over and over, the king fell in love in a deep, oddly nostalgic way. When Viveka finished speaking, the king sighed. “If I don’t take her for my wife, I shall die—this is certain!”

  He ordered the weary minister to take over the affairs of the state yet again because he would soon be departing in search of his love. The minister’s protests fell on deaf ears. Yashaketu was already busy disguising himself as an ash-covered, long-haired ascetic, so he could travel without the commotion that usually surrounded a famous king. The very next day he left Anga.

  Following the minister’s directions, he came upon a hermit called Kushanabha, who recognized the king and told him how to find a ship that would take him to the Island of Gold. The king had to cross three mountain ranges and ford raging rivers, but in time he arrived at the seashore. It was his first glimpse of the sea, which was animated like a living creature, he felt, eager to show him to his destiny’s fulfillment. A kind merchant named Lakshmidatta invited him to sail aboard his ship, and they set off for the Island of Gold.

  Halfway to the island on a calm sea, the waters rose up again, cresting into a huge wave. The king saw a woman so lovely that he vowed to make her his wife. His love only deepened when their eyes met, and she began to sing her sad song about action, fate, and rebirth.

  “Yes,” he thought, “she’s singing about us! Our love has been ordained by fate. We are destined to be united in love.” He extended his hand toward the woman, when suddenly the mountain of water silently sank to the ocean floor. The king was left gazing at mere surface. “She’s a nymph!” he exclaimed, then yelling out to the sea, “Protect me and grant me my beloved,” he jumped off the side of the ship.

  The merchant Lakshmidatta watched the water settle back behind the plunging man. Overcome with sadness and guilt that his guest—an ascetic—had perished, he contemplated throwing himself overboard as well. But then a voice from heaven rang out, “Do not despair, good merchant. The man who jumped into the water was Yashaketu, king of Anga. In a former life he was wed to the nymph who rides the wave—he shall now obtain her hand in marriage again and return to his throne.”

  And, indeed, the king did not perish. Deep beneath the ship he kept swimming downward, until he saw the glow of a magnificent city. Marble palaces and temples covered with gold and lined with precious stones stood on the ocean floor, crisscrossed with broad boulevards extended as far as he could see under the deep sea. As he moved closer, searching for his beloved, the king noticed that the city was completely deserted. He entered empty houses and searched in the back alleys, feeling himself surrounded by a gloomy silence. Finally he walked between two rows of formidable pillars into a vast hall of a white marble palace. At the center was a jewel-studded couch, on which lay a figure covered with a green shawl lined with golden embroidery.

  The king gently pulled the cloth back, revealing the moonlike glow of the nymph’s pure face. She opened her eyes. There was an instant of recognition, before she leaped off the couch and lowered herself at the feet of the royal figure. The king gently raised his beloved, and they exchanged a long glance of deep mutual recognition.

  Then they recounted their stories. King Yashaketu learned that his beloved was named Mrigankavati and that she was the daughter of a king who inexplicably exiled her to this desolate place. “I have no idea why he sent me here, and so, every day I rise up to the surface to mourn my fate. It must be some karmic sin for which I am atoning,” she told the king with a sad voice.

  The king took hold of her hands and offered her consoling words from the bottom of his heart. Then he proposed marriage. “I know we were husband and wife in a previous life. Marry me and I promise to stay with you forever.”

  “I shall marry you,” she answered, “but you must agree to one condition. Four times a month, on the eighth and fourteenth of each fortnight I must leave you for one day. You must let me go then; I promise to return.”

  The king agreed easily—it was a small price to pay for happiness. The two wed themselves to each other by a mutual declaration of love, in the manner of gandharvas, or celestial musicians.

  The abandoned city at the floor of the sea was their home, but despite its desolation the two lovers were happy. One day Mrigankavati told her husband that the time had come for her to leave him for the day. “Do not follow me, my darling. I shall be well. And whatever else you do, stay out of the crystal pavilion; it holds a pool that leads to the world of humans. If you fall in there, you shall not be able to return.” Having given these instructions, the nymph departed.

  However, the king was not content to stay behind. Brandishing a sword, he quietly followed his wife, when suddenly, to his great horror, he saw a huge demon descend swiftly like a nocturnal predator and inhale the woman into the bloody abyss of his mouth. In an instant his wife was gone! The king exploded in a violent rage, roaring like an army of demons. He swung his weapon and decapitated the monster with one blow. Instantly, his rage gave way to mourning as he stepped back and observed the torso where his beloved had perished. But then, before his very eyes, the demon’s chest began to move, then tore open from within. Out of his enormous heart emerged Mrigankavati, completely unscathed and miraculously lovely.

  The two lovers ran toward each other, but then the nymph stopped and exclaimed, “I remember! I remember everything!” She told the king that she was the daughter of a celestial king who had one day cursed her. “I was away at Shiva’s temple worshiping my Lord and lost track of time. By the time I returned, my father was furious. It was then that he cursed me: ‘Just as I was swallowed whole by hunger, so will you be swallowed by a demon four times a month!’ Then he promised that I shall be freed from this curse, and from my exile, when a king named Yashaketu slew the demon.”

  The king was thrilled. “Now we can return to my world and live happily among my people,” he cried in joy.

  “No, my dear. That is not possible. Now that you have freed me from the curse, I am to return to the celestial world where I belong.”

  “But what about our love? Our marriage?”

  The king tried to change her mind, but it was useless. He had been wrong about his fate after all; he was doomed to return alone. But in a flash, a course of action became clear in his mind. He begged his wife to stay with him for one week before returning to her celestial home, and she readily agreed. They spent six days together, drinking from the sweet cup of desperate love. On the seventh day, the king led his wife into the pavilion on some pretext, then embraced her tightly. Before she could fathom his intentions, the king threw himself into the pool, his gateway back to the human world.

  A moment later the king and the nymph emerged out of the pool in the palace garden at Anga. Members of the court, servants, and guards came running to greet their ruler, who proudly showed off his new wife. A thunderburst of cheering and clapping of hands accompanied the young couple as they floated
into the fabulous palace. The minister heard the commotion and came out of the modest office from which he ruled the kingdom. He lit up in joy at the sight of his master and humbly approached to pay his respects. But suddenly a white pallor descended on Viveka’s face. He stopped, and his bearing turned distant and thoughtful. The king failed to observe this as he gleefully displayed the maiden from the wave as his new queen. Viveka, more perceptive than anyone else in the hall, saw that the young woman was shivering with sadness.

  “You are indeed the woman from the wave, the celestial nymph.” He bowed lightly. “Why do you look so sad?”

  “I am sad, wise minister. Because of love I have now lost the power to return to my heavenly home.” Her eyes moistened as she spoke.

  The king turned in disappointment, but quickly composed himself. “Don’t cry, my beloved,” he said, smiling happily. He tightened his embrace around her shoulders.

  That night the minister returned to his home in silence. Skipping dinner, he went directly to bed, where, a short time later, his wife found him dead of a broken heart.

  I had stopped walking before the old man finished the story. Now I suddenly became aware that my feet were turning sensitive; the stone slabs were particularly coarse at this point. Off the path was a cluster of weeds that looked soft, but I only half noted them. The story had almost completely absorbed me.

  “Now, my young friend,” the old man turned to face me, “why did the minister die? Let us assume for a moment that this story is a riddle. Show me what you can do.”

  In some strange way I found the death of the minister saddening. It was a good question too, one that went straight to the heart of the story. But I shrugged. “I don’t know. There could be lots of reasons, I suppose.”

  “Such as?” He was beaming.

  “Before, when the king was not in love, the minister had to do all the ruling for him. Now, that he’s found the love of his life things would likely get even harder for the minister.”

  The old man clapped his hands and almost squealed in joy. “That’s wonderful. What else?”

  I studied him closely. There was something disjointed about his reaction: fast and slow, ecstatic and observant, all at once. “Maybe the minister had also fallen in love with the nymph.” I suggested. “After all, wasn’t he transfixed by the sight of her?”

  “Ah yes, that’s much better.” The librarian turned his gaze toward my feet and remained silent. I looked down too, but there was nothing, just my stupid toes taking turns bearing the load of my feet on the hot ground. “Of course, you’re wrong on both counts,” he broke the silence. “The minister died because the nymph lost her heavenly home. His own reason for existence thus came to an end. Do you see?”

  “In truth, I don’t. Sure, she lost her home, but she did end up with the man she had been married to in a previous life. His fate was fulfilled. Isn’t that the point?” I had slowly inched my way off the path and was standing in the weeds, smiling sheepishly.

  “My friend, if we were sitting on the veranda of the Lalita Mahal sipping on English tea, that would have been the point. Here, on the hill, after the stories I’ve already told you, the point is different.”

  “How can it possibly matter where we are?” I sounded edgy.

  The old man laughed in a conciliatory way, like a boy. But he said, “As I start to tell you a story, try to keep in mind what we discussed previously. A sitar note at mid-raga sounds entirely different than it does in isolation, don’t you think? In this case, we were talking about karma and the transmigration of the soul from one life to another.”

  “I know.” My voice sounded exasperated. “That’s precisely what I was saying.”

  The old man touched me lightly on my elbow, and I felt a soft breeze ruffle my hair. Then he said soothingly, “Did you feel the sadness of the minister?”

  Indeed I had. I was moved by his sadness and his death. I nodded again.

  “Good, good. That, precisely, is the sadness of samsara—transmigration. The soul journeys from one body to another, from one identity to the next. Do you follow?”

  “Are you saying the king is the soul?” The old man was getting ready to chuckle, I could see, so I switched tacks instantly. “No, wait. The nymph…the nymph is the soul!” He relaxed now, so I continued. “But how can that be? Isn’t the king the hero of the tale, the character in search of a goal? If the soul takes on many bodies over the course of many lifetimes, it is the active agent, like the king in the tale.”

  The old man began to tap his cane on the stone in rhythm with his words. “He’s learning, the boy’s learning…” Suddenly he stopped and looked at me gravely. “Look, you put your finger precisely on the tragedy of samsara—but in reverse. From where we stand it only seems that the king is the hero. Or, to put it differently, what we regard as our soul—our self, or ultimate identity—that is hardly the soul! In fact the self is the body…It’s the body, or what Aristotelian theologians called the embodied soul—a false monarch. Do you understand now?”

  I did. I really did start to understand him. “Let me get this straight. My soul or what I think is my soul is actually a part of my body and it does not transmigrate, right?”

  “That is more or less correct, for now. Our psychological self perishes at death.”

  “But it—I, the self—thinks it is the soul—the real thing—and so it robs the true soul of its celestial home, its divinity!”

  “Brilliant, young man. You are wonderful.”

  “And that is what makes transmigration sad—this constant falling in love with a false identity…”

  I turned away from the old man so he would not see my face. I didn’t want him to see my excitement. I spotted a datura flower, brilliant yellow, farther off the path and meandered in its direction, feigning botanical interest. In truth, I detested the datura.

  Years earlier, when I was fifteen or so, I had conducted a small ethnobotanical experiment with the damn thing. That’s a fancy way of saying I just ate some. Somewhere I had read that the datura had “spiritual” properties—it was hallucinogenic. I was not interested in drugs or trips—I think it was just curiosity about how a plant can affect the mind. I don’t remember much about the experience. My body became detached from my control and the world slowed down to a standstill. Every moment stretched out to a hellish eternity—there was no pain, only interminable stillness. I later came to believe that what made that experience so frightening was the psychotic-like loss of selfhood. The body I occupied and the consciousness centered in it did not gel. At a time when I was greedy to be someone, even the most basic self-identity was snatched away chemically for what seemed like an eternity.

  My father later said I had been running amok, that my body shook and twitched like a broken windup toy. I woke up in the hospital with tubes running in and out of my body. My parents were arguing, as usual, but I could barely hear my mother. She always whispered when she was angry, which made her more frightening. Mother thought I should be grounded for a year; my father told her to take it easier on me. “Look, honey, he’s not a druggie. He’s just a budding mystic. Don’t be too hard on the boy.”

  But she was hard. “Mystic, my foot.” My mother had curly black hair and savage, brilliant eyes. Her father had been a Jesuit priest who married one of his graduate students at Cal-Tech. Mother, who was a devout Catholic, wielded harsh judgments about religion or about humanity’s failures apropos of God. I was grounded for six months. During that time I switched interest from botany to zoology. I loved my father for calling me a mystic.

  “You recognize the datura?” The old man was right behind me, looking at the yellow flower. I shrugged. “It is Shiva’s plant you know. Better not touch, though, without a guru. Like Shiva, it can be dangerous.”

  I turned back to the path, avoiding his eyes, and spit out quietly, “Damn right.”

  Suddenly I remembered a question. “What is the minister then? If the girl is the true soul and the king is the psychological self—
the body/mind, I guess—what then is the minister?”

  The old man smiled in delight at my question; he seemed positively happy. “Why, my friend, that should be obvious!” he said. “Viveka is wisdom—discriminating intuition. And, of course, he dies over and over again, until we are ready to see the truth.”

  THE BOY’S SACRIFICE

  Not far from here, in the hills to the northwest, is a city called Chitrakuta. It is a jewel of a city, matched in beauty only by the righteousness of its king and the harmony among its many castes. In one of the outlying neighborhoods, a seven-year-old Brahmin boy lived with his parents. The three lived modestly, but the couple felt rich with the joy of having such a special child. The boy, whose name was Thammu, was not only sweet-looking; he was also as mild as a bel tree sapling and indispensable around the house. Above all, he was wise far beyond his years. His parents felt assured that their elder years and their future life would be blessed with security and happiness because of their son’s virtues.

  One day, as the boy was carrying some firewood to the house, he noticed crowds lining up along the road where a noisy procession of chariots and soldiers was making its way slowly. At the head of the procession rode a dignitary in a high chariot, calling out to the excited crowds. The boy put down the wood and waited for the chariot to come nearer. Finally he was able to hear the strange announcement of that important-looking man: “The king is looking for a seven-year-old Brahmin boy who would agree to offer his life to a Brahmin demon for the sake of the king and the community! The boy’s parents will have to hold the boy down, as the king will slay the boy. Anyone who agrees will receive this statue made of gold and gems, along with one hundred villages!” Behind the lead chariot was another in which a brilliant gem-laden golden statue was displayed. It was the size of Thammu and must have been priceless. The crowds were transfixed by the glittering image, but no one seemed to take the words seriously.